I grew up at a time when technologies were transparent and easy to understand, but now society is evolving toward insanity and incomprehensibility. So I wanted to make technology human. At the age of 12, I created a wearable computer system that allowed me to see radio waves and, more importantly, see the invisible ways in which technology is watching or sensing us. This device formed the basis for my portfolio in my successful admission to MIT where I founded (as its first member) the MI...
Read More »

Excellent Instsructable, very well made and well-documented!One thing I was wondering from the first video at the beginning, it appeared to always start on COTTON, on power up. So could you simply use the bump markers, and always set it to COTTON before you turn it on? (Align the bump markers to COTTON just before you turn it on, and then the bump markers would always match the state variables.)But from the video near the end, it seemed to start at five = SPIN on powerup....

Derek:Excellent work; very nicely done.What supply voltage for the 1 watt LED through the 5k resistor, e.g. with that high of resistance it might be hard to get a good fraction of the 1 watt power going into the LED....

Looks great. Nice slide.The blue and the grey look like they're 180deg. out of phase.Is it possible one is an inverting amplifier and the other is not?Try to identify what's causing the phase shift and see if you can correct it.Keep up the great work!

Looks great.Nice pictures. One think you could try is making it direct-coupled (getting rid of the coupling capacitors). It is a bit more difficult because you've got to make the circuit stable all the way down to DC (Direct Current) but it will allow you to move arbitrarily slow and still trace out the same path, so you can get a nice long run of many cycles of the wave and remain phase-coherent.

Yes try some op amp stages followed by a simple 1-transistor amplifier. That works quite well as an alternative to the LM386. Did you make sure to capactively couple the headphones also. Maybe include a circuit diagram and more closeup pictures so we can help you diagnose the problem.

Excellent!Nice to see that you tried a few different exponents to get a sense of it.Next thing you might want to try is ground-truth, e.g. what exponent gives smallest error between taking exposure with both sources present.Try taking 3 pictures: the first with one light on, the second with the second light on only, and the third with both lights on. Then see what exponent gives closest match between getting the first 2 images to give a result that looks like the 3rd (smallest MSE for example).

Looks great. Try inverting the output and then you'll observe the feedback effect more strongly since positive feedback in a dark room causes increased sensitivity and stands out nicely against the background. Keep up the great work!

Looks great! Next thing to try is feedback, e.g. connect to amplifier to drive light source, and then move the light source back-and-forth in front of the camera to generate a feedbackograph (metaveillography), http://wearcam.org/gem2018/08516502.pdf

Excellent! The .gif image looks really good.Next step is to do this same sequence of steps with something that exhibits phenomenology from the real world, so that it tells us something about a physical phenomena. Try for example, seeing otherwise invisible radio waves, using these same long exposure steps.

That .gif image looks great. Very creative!Next step would be to repeat the same photographic technique with something that responds to real world physical phenomenology so that it becomes an example of "phenomenological reality" (see http://wearcam.org/par/ for some examples).Keep up the great work!

Here's some links:http://wearcam.org/swim/arbotics/SWIMbot_reciproca...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann#/media/Fi...

Its just a photograph. The light moves while being photographed, or while being viewed by human eye.Here's what it looks like to the naked eye as well as to a photographic camera or video camera. If shooting video you need a camera with 100% shutter angle ideally, e.g. video on Sony A7 works good and gives a true and accurate depiction of the same reality roughly the same way the eye sees it. Most video in most camera phones doesn't work so truly or accurately.When you use the MetaVision eyeglass, you can see it from any angle, including angles you didn't shoot it from originally.

Yes, we designed a board with 100 microphones every 7.5 inches.Note by way of comparison the machine we put together for this Instructable has a resolution of about 10,000 pixels across by 8,000 pixels high, i.e. much better.So in order to study scientific phenomena, I prefer to SWIM out a 2D space rather than the linear array SWIM, even though the original SWIM that I made in my childhood 43 years ago used a linear array (of only 35 elements = super low resolution): http://wearcam.org/swim/

Tell me more about the wave machine used in your HS physical science class. Was this a PAR (Princeton Applied Research) wave machine?

The exposure time depends on the speed of movement of the robotic mechanism, itself limited by the integration time of the lock in amplifier, and by the requirement for safety and longevity of the robotic mechanism. It is realtime, but just on whatever scale is set by the system design requirements (higher frequencies can update faster, for example). When done in VR, it updates around 60 frames per second, although the original scan still requires whatever the exposure time is set by other constraints. You might find some of my research papers useful in this context.

Yes, you need another wire connected to the terminal that I labeled "IF". That wire goes through an amplifier to the LM3914 input. The choice of amplifier gain is up to you, depending on how sensitive you want to make it (e.g. how far away you want to pick up objects, etc.).By the way, let me know why the rush, e.g. what is the deadline (usually I do these things just for fun, on my own clock, whenever I feel like it ... to be done).

You need a S.W.I.M. as per the other Instructable,as well as a rotary motor to spin it, a wheel mechanism and counterweight (or balance it in middle), and a rail to move the assembly back and forth while it spins.

Windshield washer fluid is alcohol.See this article about how to make your own windshield washer fluid:https://www.diynatural.com/homemade-windshield-was..."... 8 oz. isopropyl rubbing alcohol (high proof vodka can be substituted)"(it specifically mentions "vodka").Since windshield washer fluid is alcohol, and has been for many years (it used to be made of methanol which is "wood alcohol", many years ago), it would seem that the materials selected for the design of windshields, and their mounting, would need to be designed to function well in an alcohol infused environment.See also https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/1092...

There's multiple cameras on the EyeTap. The PiCam is there along with some other cameras. The EyeTap is a nice general purpose experimental apparatus with the optical rail along its length, so you can add many other sensors for sound waves, radio waves, thermal, infrared, ultraviolet, etc., sensing.

Looks good.You might want to also try to use a flash light at the beginning of each exposure so that you can see a difference between the head and the tail. There should be a head that's sharp and clear, with a blurry or smeared trail of light tapering back to the tail.Alternatively you could let the head "burn in" more, e.g. let the head sit still for more exposure time, while ending the exposure abruptly for the tail. Right now the head and tail look the same, but if you can make them more distinct from each other, you'll get a better result.

Looks great!It would be nice if there was a way to make the head and tail distinct from each other. One way to do that would be to introduce a flash light at the beginning of each exposure to pick up some ambient details in the scene at one end (but not the other) of the exposure.

This looks great!You might also want to try using a flash at the beginning of each exposure so that there is more distinction between the "head" and the "tail".Another alternative would be to let the head "burn in" more, e.g. let the head sit still for more exposure time, while ending the exposure abruptly for the tail (don't let the light stay still for the tail, e.g. cutoff the exposure at the right time so that the tail's still moving during the exposure).

Yes, this is a very nice looking light source.It is better to move the light rather than the camera because then you can flash the exposure, e.g. have a flash light come on briefly at the beginning of each exposure. This "flash and blur" technique is quite common in photography. See these examples: http://www.perfectlandscape.com/helena_blur.jpghttps://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-...

The light motion looks great!For the star, try also doing the easement trails as well, e.g. since it is essentially cyclic in nature, let it build and trail out, as it goes around the cycle, otherwise it builds up and then decrescendos suddenly.

That's a good idea; I'll try some waxes next time (maybe that will help the tree sap not stick so well.Free alcohol comes from speaking gigs, talks, etc., e.g. even though they pay me to speak, they also often give me a bottle of booze. That seems to happen a lot in the academic professorial world. To get free booze: study at graduate school, finish your PhD and get a faculty position and do some interesting work and it is likely people will invite you to speak and give you free meals. And free booze that you can use to wash your car with....

I'm interested in electric vehicles and experimenting with secondary electrical systems, and we're also looking at possibilities of converting vehicles to electric usage. A secondary electrical system is also useful because we do a lot of research on smart cars and instrumented cars, etc..

As mentioned by bcrocker1, vodka smells pretty much identical to other cleaning fluids like methanol (previously used as windshield washer fluid and antifreeze), propanol (solvent, industrial cleaner), etc..So for the few minutes before the smell dissipates, it will smell a lot like cleaning fluid.Don't drink the fluids. The smell stays for a long time on people who drink alcohol, http://alcoholrehab.com/alcoholism/smell-of-alcohol-breath-pores/

And it is often cheaper than IPA (IsoPropyl Alcohol). That's why we use vodka to clean the soldering flux off circuit boards (we used to use propanol for that, but found that vodka is cheaper and does the job just as well).

Yes, I took a look at the Rain-X video on YouTube and it looks great. I'll try some next time I do the windshield....

Move to California, where the safe operation of a motor vehicle is made easy by way of readily available dish soap, Windex, vodka, and Rain-X.

I'll try some vinegar and see if that works well (e.g. if it evaporates quickly and leaves a nice shine, etc.). One reason I used vodka is because I already had lots of vodka sitting around here that would otherwise go to waste taking up space in the kitchen cabinet.

Yes, vodka is available in every grocery store I've ever been to in California, and it is really cheap, and it is usually right by the checkout so I always see it and remember to get some while checking out. At Trader Joe's it costs $5.99 for a nice big bottle (a metric "fifth") and $9.99 for the extra large size (1.75 litres which is more than two fifths). Burnett's comes in cases of 12... $71.88 well-spent! The larger size (Vodka of the Gods) works out to about $21.61 per gallon. Cheaper than many cleaning fluids, works great, dries up quickly, and leaves a nice shine.

Sensors like these transmit infrared energy.More generally, some sensors transit energy whereas others don't transit so it is harder to pick up the signal.There is a lot of literature about bug sweepers in general, and detecting cameras in particular.My contribution is less about new detection methods and more about how to present the data once detected, i.e. concept of phenomenological augmented reality ("Real Reality"), http://wearcam.org/par/--Steve, http://Mannlab.com

Excellent!I look forward to seeing some more pictures, especially if you're able to get something where we can see a nice "veillance flux" pattern. Take a look at http://wearcam.org/abaq/for some inspiration and ideas, etc..Keep up the great work, and I look forward to seeing where you take this!Steve

First see if the individual components work separately.For example, see if you can get any of the lights to sequence irrespective of the phenomenamplifier. If you get that much working, move to the next step.Also see if you can first get the phenomenamplifier working with just one LED, and then add the trick of more LEDs once you have it working with one LED.The idea is that if it works with one LED, you can sequence it (i.e. have them come in sequentially), as in http://wearcam.org/surveillancestudy-36exposures/